


My hoodie will never be too small for you

by Inky_Scribbles



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Family Problems, Friendship, Gen, Helping Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Nishinoya Yuu's grandfather, Noya is a good senpai, making each other feel better, mentions of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 23:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18158699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inky_Scribbles/pseuds/Inky_Scribbles
Summary: The wind whispers.The leaves rustle.Not a bird, and not a cricket within hearing range.Maybe it’s just him, but the winter’s hush carves a grotty sheen into everything. Shallow snow glints at him eerily, way different from how it looks in the mornings when he and Ryū mess around on the way to school. The forest skulks above him. The air is tight.“Shouyou?” he asks, partly because he hasn’t said anything in a while, and partly because the feeling of being watched is almost overwhelming. Not that he’d ever admit that. “You still there?”





	My hoodie will never be too small for you

**Author's Note:**

> I was hesitant to write anything outside of the superhero theme, but then I realised that this is my account and it's for fun, so uhh my rules. Branding doesn't exist. Overthrow the government. 
> 
> I listened to Cavetown's cover of I'm low on gas and you need a jacket while writing this, among some of his other covers and originals. Mostly for the sound, but I don't think the lyrics are entirely irrelevant, either.

It’s way too late in the night when Yū gets the call. He spares barely a glance at the clock, gleaming in the dark like cat’s eyes. _3 : 49_.

Yū likes to think of himself as an early riser, mostly because of his grandfather’s old habits, but even he wouldn’t consider this a time for waking. So he’s got to assume that whoever’s calling was either woken up like him, or has been awake this entire time. Either way, it can only mean trouble, so when he answers the phone, he doesn’t even bother looking at the name.

“Noya-san,” the line crackles as the person on the other end sighs. He sounds exhausted. “Can you… can you please come and pick me up?”

“Shouyou?” Of course, Yū got his driver’s license not too long ago, so it’s not really that odd for him to be the team’s chauffeur, although that usually falls to Kinoshita. “What’s going on? Where are you?”

Shouyou’s breathing catches, and it wouldn’t have been obvious if he hadn’t been breathing heavily in the first place, but it was, so it is. “Nothing. It’s nothing, I’m sorry Noya-san— sorry for waking you— I just…”

“No, it’s fine, it’s fine. What kind of senpai would I be if I didn’t help my kouhai in need?” Yū assures carefully, slipping out of bed and throwing on the closest hoodie. He grabs a spare one from the closet, too, just to be safe. Maybe Ennoshita is rubbing off on him, but it is the middle of winter. “Where are you? I’ll come pick you up.”

“I’m…” his voice cuts out, but when Yū looks at his phone, the call hasn’t ended. “I don’t know. Do you know where my house is?”

Vaguely. “Yeah, over the mountain, right?” He grabs the keys and heads out the door. Hopefully he’ll be back before his grandfather wakes up, so he doesn’t bother with a note. He doesn’t usually mind when he does stuff like this, anyway. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Okay,” Shouyou whispers, almost the exact opposite of during practice. Then he hangs up.

The car ride is quick, made even quicker by his near-Saeko-level driving, but no one’s really awake at this time apart from the farmers, so it should be fine. It’s not like they’re out driving, either way.

He parks the car on the curb of a road, just off a left-hand turn onto a smaller track. A reasonable gap cuts the trees off from the road, but the track is not granted the same courtesy. The forest looms darkly over the shady trail, ominous in a way he doesn’t remember it ever being in the day, or even at night, when practice ran late. The branches stretch out to one another, marrying in the middle over the centre of the gap.

He ends up calling Shouyou again, and it only takes two rings. “Noya?”

“I’m here,” he jumps the fence to the track, even though there’s a perfectly good gate. The trees bristle in what could have been the wind. “This place sure is creepy, Shouyou. I’m at this track over by the road. Where are you?”

“Somewhere in the forest. I can’t find the edge.”

“Can you send me your location?”

“I don’t know how much use that would be, but I can try. We’re kind of off the map here.”

“That’s fine,” Yū promises quietly, the forest uncomfortably silent around him. Or maybe that’s just his imagination. “It’s a good place to start, at least. Are you close to the summit?”

The wind whispers.

The leaves rustle.

Not a bird, and not a cricket within hearing range.

Maybe it’s just him, but the winter’s hush carves a grotty sheen into everything. Shallow snow glints at him eerily, way different from how it looks in the mornings when he and Ryū mess around on the way to school. The forest skulks above him. The air is tight.

“Shouyou?” he asks, partly because he hasn’t said anything in a while, and partly because the feeling of being watched is almost overwhelming. Not that he’d ever admit that. “You still there?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, but then there’s a ping, a text notification. “Yeah.”

Yū looks at the phone, and with a sinking feeling he notices that there’s no satellite image; only two pointers. One blue, and one red. “Okay.”

Maybe his voice shivers or something, because a moment later Shouyou sounds concerned. “Are you okay? I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“It’s alright, Shouyou.” He moves towards the red cursor, and the blue one moves with him. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, don’t move. Do you want to stay on the phone?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“We can stay on, if you want.”

“It’s fine,” but this time when he says it, his voice cracks, and Yū had almost forgotten how choked he had sounded before. Before he can protest, the line is cut, and all he’s left with is the blinking red cursor. A cheap representation of Shouyou’s bright hair, maybe. Crude.

Almost the entirety of the forest is balanced on the jagged slope of the mountain. Every tree is crouched at a bleary angle, and some have simply folded over, claws of bark reaching in another direction, balanced by the ground or against other trees. He forgoes the path, and takes this feral direction instead. It’ll be quicker, anyway.

By the time he’s stumbled over to where the cursor is blinking, he thinks he’s gotten used to the forest. For all that it’s quiet, and for all that it’s eerie, it’s sleepy, too. Tired. Old.

Yū almost doesn’t spot Shouyou, crouched in the snow between two weathered young trees. He’s almost as quiet as the forest around them, caught on the cusp between still and waking. He’s like a plucky autumn bush, with his ember-coloured hair. He’s quivering. “Shouyou?”

Except today, he doesn’t seem quite as plucky as usual. When he looks up, his eyes are puffed and round, cheeks red and stained with something glistening. When he sees Yū, he squeezes his eyes shut, but his body unfurls like all of his energy has been sapped.

Yū doesn’t think he’s ever seen Shouyou like this. Not after they lost to Seijou, or when he was arguing with Kageyama, or even when they didn’t make it to finals last year, when the buzz of being at nationals had finally been worn to the ground. 

“Let’s go back to the car,” he suggests, curling over next to him. They’re eye level now, since Yū got his growth spurt last year. “It’s warmer. And then we could talk, okay?”

Yū hasn’t really ever been in this situation before. The closest was kicking Asahi’s butt into gear every time he lost steam. Or kicking the team’s butt into gear. Somehow, he doesn’t think it’ll work the same way, here.

Shouyou nods into his arms, and when he gets up, he doesn’t look at Yū¸ but Yū doesn’t ask him to, either. He offers the spare hoodie, which is just Shouyou’s size, and they head away in the direction Yū came from.

The walk back is slower, and the air is somewhat colder, but the breeze is fresh, even as it chills. The ground is hilly and uneven, and Shouyou almost trips a couple of times, so Yū keeps a gentle grip on his arm to keep him steady. It takes a little longer than he remembers it taking, but maybe that’s because there’s not so much of a rush anymore.

The car doors click open with a flash of orange light, and Yū loads Shouyou into the passenger’s seat. He collapses into it, unseeing eyes on the ceiling. His face is drawn at the corners, and the shadows that Yū hadn’t noticed before look darker than ever. Under the overhead car light, he just looks exhausted. More than anything, he looks like he needs a hug.

Resisting the urge, he closes the door as quietly as possible. Once he gets in the other side, he cranks up the heating until he can’t anymore. Then he falls back into his own seat, mirroring Shouyou, but keeping half an eye on him, too.

Silence stretches like a cloudy film over them, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like a barrier. His hand finds Shouyou’s without even looking, and when he squeezes, Shouyou squeezes back, if weakly. He looks so, so tired.

He hesitates to break the blanketing hush, different to that of the forest, warmer. But he wants to know, and he’s never let something like social cues stop him before, even, or especially, in the face of this kind of atmosphere. “Do you want to go home, now?”

His hand tenses in Yū’s, face pinching, and for a split second, Yū can see the tear tracks spilled like trails of melted glass down his cheeks. Shiny, almost pretty in the light of the car, but then gone. Yū knows his answer before he gathers the voice to answer.

“No.”

The silence drops back down easily, as if gravity itself is aiding it. Within it, Yū feels like he can speak truths that he doesn’t usually. So he does.

“Me either,” it feels like a confession, like he should be guilty for it. But he had learned better than that, hadn’t he?

Shouyou’s eyes drift to his, and Yū wonders how much he can read from those two words. Maybe a lot, maybe a little. He’s always been a bit on the random side of things. He’s not sure if he minds that Shouyou knows.

He doesn’t think he does.

“We could camp out here, instead,” he suggests, and it sounds like the best thing right now. He doesn’t think his grandfather will notice too much. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Shouyou nod, two strands of windbitten falling into his eyes. Without thinking, he brushes them aside, tucking them behind an ear.

Before the quiet can return fully, Shouyou turns to look at him fully, eyes full of something or other. Maybe exhaustion, maybe sadness, maybe hope. Maybe all three. “My dad’s coming back.”

To someone else, it might have sounded like an incomplete sentence. To Yū, the unsaid words could have been spelled out in front of them for all the difference it made. Unthinking, his knees curl into his chest, chin atop them, and even though it’s awkward, his hand doesn’t leave Shouyou’s. At the same time, Shouyou does the same, a free forearm covering half of his face.

“I don’t think mine ever will,” he admits, not quite a whisper.

Shouyou is quiet, too. Then, “Do you want him to?”

Even after so much thinking, so many daydreams, imagining what would happen. What he hopes would happen. What he hopes wouldn’t happen. Even after all that, the answer doesn’t come. He squeezes Shouyou’s hand.

“I don’t know.”

It’s quiet again. The trees outside move, but no sound enters the car. Only two kids breathing, and the blaring heat of the fans whirring away. He turns them down a notch, but his own breathing is just as loud. “I don’t know if I want either of them to.”

Shouyou’s face doesn’t change, but maybe that’s because half of it is buried away from the world. “You’re so strong, Noya,” his eyes close. “I can’t do this alone.” He turns to the side, away from Yū. “Not like you.”

The tears spill over, and at first it’s silent, so silent that Yū wonders if it’s just his imagination, but then, on an inhale, Shouyou chokes on his own juddering breath. The hand in Yū’s fists until both of them go white as bone. He doesn’t mind.

“Can I hug you?” through a sob, Shouyou nods, and for the short moment that Yū can see his face, it looks like he’s in pain. In a way, he supposes that he is.

Yū unfurls, shifting until he’s in the passenger seat, too. Then he folds himself around Shouyou, as much a hug as collapsing over him, covering as much of Shouyou as he can, like a blanket. Shouyou is warm, fingers clutching at him like he’s some kind of lifeline. In that moment. Yū has to wonder if he really is. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Somewhere about halfway through, and Yū isn’t sure he remembers exactly when he started, but suddenly tears are crawling down his face, too. A high-pitched sound leaves him before he can stuff it back down, and suddenly they’re both sobbing in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s Honda civic.

By the time the sobs have been drowned in tears and breathing comes easier, Yū feels about ready to fall asleep, but he doesn’t. They’re a tangled mess, and he knows for sure that more than one spine would be in pain by morning. They have practice tomorrow, after all.

Through a window, a cloud drifts by in the wind, high in the sky. “You’re silly, Shou.” He says, chin dipping up and down oddly against Shouyou’s shoulder.

“Why?”

Yū almost laughs, but he doesn’t know why he would have if he did. “I can’t do things alone. I always have you guys to count on.”

Shouyou lets out a breath, warm against Yū’s neck. His hands tighten around Yū’s back, fingers digging into the hoodie’s material.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, though,” he adds, watching a misty lavender colour appear on the horizon. Morning is coming. Maybe there’ll be birdsong in the forest by the time he gets home.

“Yeah,” Shouyou whispers, and Yū wonders if he’s looking at the night disappear behind the other end of the mountain, just as he’s looking at the sunrise. “Maybe you’re right.”

Yū grins.

“Of course I’m right!”

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly to tide myself over, because I am currently 25k deep in a Run With The Wind soulmate fic. If you're in that fandom, watch out for it, I guess?


End file.
